


Old Tales Made New

by MalMuses



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Flirting, Bookstore Owner Castiel (Supernatural), Castiel (Supernatural) Reads, Castiel recites Shakespeare, Dean Winchester Reads, Epistolary, First Kiss, Letters, M/M, Mechanic Dean Winchester, Mutual Pining, POV Castiel, Pining, Writing, fairytales - Freeform, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 23:06:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18292043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalMuses/pseuds/MalMuses
Summary: Cas enjoyed a quiet, pleasant life. A little lonely in the love department, perhaps, but he had a comfortable rhythm to his days thanks to running his basement bookstore, Subtext.His days got a nice little shake-up when a hurricane blew a fantastically beautiful book-lover into his store; Unfortunately, Dean wasn't from Sioux Falls, and Cas wasn't sure if he was interested in any more than a dry place to pass the time.Obviously, Cas didn'tpine.He was far too sensible for that. Or so he told himself.





	Old Tales Made New

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sternchencas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternchencas/gifts).



> A PB Exchange: Fairy Tale fic for [sternchencas!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternchencas/pseuds/sternchencas)
> 
> With thanks to [saltnhalo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltnhalo/pseuds/saltnhalo) and [andimeantittosting.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saylee/pseuds/andimeantittosting)

 

Subtext. Could there be a more perfect name for a basement bookstore? Castiel certainly didn’t think so. It had been _Armstrong’s Books_ when he’d been lucky enough to snag the place at a failing business auction, after saving every penny, dime, and dollar that he could find since he was in high school. He’d never wanted anything else in his life, other than his own book store. And one of the first things he’d done when he got one was to change the name. Subtext was his home. Quite literally, for the first couple of years—he hadn’t been able to afford the store expenses _and_ his rent, so he’d hunkered down in the stockroom at the back, amongst the pallets of yet-to-be-unpacked deliveries and discarded trade publications that he’d one day get around to recycling.

Five years on, business was better. He’d worked with friends and other businesses, established a name for himself among the local network of entrepreneurs, had some good write-ups and reviews in newspapers that drew booklovers from surrounding towns. Now he had a solid, if not excessive, income.

Mondays were game nights, when his friend Charlie brought her table-top group to play RPGs and endless rounds of Munchkin. Avid fantasy readers, some of them would pick up a couple of books a week, not to mention copious coffees from the tiny machine Cas had installed behind the counter. Wednesdays were for the classics reading club, mostly housewives and busybodies, but at least they all purchased their own copies. Thursday was student night, where coffee was free and students got ten percent off, and were encouraged to sit and work amongst the stacks. On Saturday afternoons, Castiel did readings for the local kids, before opening the store up in the evening for poetry jams and dramatic readings that were surprisingly popular with local young people.

The events gave Cas's life a rhythm, a meaning beyond waking up every day and dusting the stacks. He was content, in his small, bookish bubble.

His bubble popped one Saturday morning.

The basement was dim from the raging storm outside, so Cas was walking around turning on the extra lamps. Many businesses hadn’t even opened in the face of the storm warning, but below ground in the solid, red brick building was the safest place Cas could be, so why not turn the sign to open. He didn’t expect company.

He certainly didn’t expect his own personal hurricane; six feet of sandy hair, leather jacket, and freckled skin bounding in off the street, shutting the door behind him with a finality that was more about the weather outside than his eagerness to shop, Cas assumed.

The man’s hair was soaked at the front, the back having been marginally protected by a very wet car magazine that now dripped from his hand down to Cas's doormat. The wet bangs were plastered to his forehead, trickling tiny rivers down across his pink cheeks; flushed from dashing through the storm, Cas guessed.

But his eyes… Cas had only read about eyes like that. Usually in the late-night ramblings of some of the surprisingly talented unpublished writers he followed online—those eyes were fanfiction green, he’d have sworn to anybody. Charlie tried to tell Cas that his own eyes were his best feature, when she was trying to sell him on the idea of dating; but he’d be willing to bet his blues were nothing on those verdant, moss irises speckled with gold.

Staring. He was staring. Oh no.

Blushing at his own awkwardness, Cas quickly mumbled, “Welcome to Subtext,” before he dashed off behind his counter.

If the man wanted to pass away the storm here, he wouldn’t bother him.

Instead, he lurked behind the cash register, ostensibly stacking a few advance copies of books that a contact in Kansas City had sent him, picking which ones to take home. One of them caught his eye particularly; a thick, pretty tome of reworked fairy tales, where the princess rescued herself or turned out, in fact, to be a prince in the first place.

He was looking down at the book, sliding his fingers over the embossed cover, when a throat cleared in front of the counter.

“Hey, sorry for running in off the street and dripping all over your mat.”

Cas jumped, but recovered quickly. “Don’t worry about it. Better inside than out, during this weather.”

“I didn’t realize it was going to be this bad, actually,” the man confessed, looking sheepish.

“There's a storm warning, the tail end of a hurricane from out east—didn’t you know?”

“Uh, no, actually. I’m not from around here, I just drove in for something yesterday afternoon, grabbed a cheap motel overnight. I thought I’d go for a walk and grab a coffee and a donut before I headed home but—” he gestured back behind him to the storm that was no doubt roaring at the top of the steps beyond the door. “—you were the only place open.”

Cas couldn’t help but smile. “Well, croissants I don’t do—the flakes get stuck to the pages. But coffee I have.”

The man’s eyes lit up as Cas gestured to the small espresso machine and drip setup on the back counter. “Oh, that’s awesome, yeah. Coffee it is.”

Cas put the book he’d been eyeing down on the counter and turned to grab a mug. “How’d you like it?”

“Just black.”

When Cas turned back around with it, the man was eyeing the fairy tale book curiously. He looked up suddenly as Cas turned, as if embarrassed to be caught examining it. “How much for the coffee?”

Cas waved away his words. “You didn’t come here expecting to spend money, so I won’t take any. Just enjoy a cup and warm up, there’s more brewing if you want it.”

The man smiled widely; his grin was slightly crooked. “Thank you,” he said, as their fingers brushed fractionally while Cas gave him the cup. “You won’t get in trouble for giving me free coffee or anything, right?”

“No.” Cas laughed, shaking his head, and extended a hand. “I’m Cas; this is my store. I only have one other employee, and she only works here after school gets out.”

“Oh! Well, I’m Dean,” the green-eyed man replied, juggling his coffee across to his other hand so that he could shake Cas's. “It’s really a small, independent kind of place.”

“Indeed,” said Cas, smiling quietly to himself. “Small and independent is kind of the theme of my life.”

Dean raised an eyebrow at that, but let it pass as he brought the mug to his lips.

“Were you interested in the fairy tale book?’ Cas asked, gesturing to the dark-covered story collection that still rested on the counter.

“Ah, I was just curious. It seemed quite progressive for fairy tales,” Dean said conversationally.

Cas nodded, picking the book back up and adopting his dramatic reading voice that he brought out on Saturday evenings, even deeper and calmer than his usual timbre. “ _Stories of old ways with new rules, where the witch can be the hero and the prince can dance in glass slippers, the princess fights her own dragons, and the seven dwarves can kiss the woodsman awake_ ,” he quoted from the introductory paragraph. “It certainly sounds progressive. I was planning on reading it.”

Dean was blinking at him, and for a moment Cas wondered if he’d made the man uncomfortable, or if he was bothered by something the book presented. That would be a shame; no matter how beautiful this man was, hateful views would make him ugly.

“Sorry,” Cas said, lowering the book as he responded primly. “I didn’t intend to make you uncomfortable—”

“You didn’t,” Dean corrected immediately, the hand not occupied with his coffee mug darting out to briefly touch Cas's own atop the book cover in reassurance. “Not at all. You just, uh—you have quite the voice there. For reading, and stuff.”

“And stuff?” Cas couldn’t help the tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth, spotting the creeping line of pink skin that was emerging from the man’s collar.

Dean shifted, uncomfortable, and Cas took a small step back behind the register to spare him.

“You said you were thinking of reading it?” Dean asked after a minute of coffee drinking had passed. “So—it’s not for the store, then? I can’t get a copy?”

Cas shook his head. “Not yet, at least. It’ll be available for purchase in a month, though—if you want to come back.”

Cas found himself hoping, ridiculously, that Dean would want to come back. But then, he remembered—Dean said he wasn’t from around here. He’d just stopped by for some event or another.

Reining himself in, Cas busied himself making a coffee of his own while the man plucked his phone out of his pocket. He looked down at it with a slightly regretful smile, before finishing his coffee and placing the cup on the counter.

“Looks like my brother is waiting outside in the car, came to rescue me from the incoming storm and get out of here before it gets worse,” he said, explaining somewhat needlessly.

“That’s kind of him,” Cas said, disappointed.

“Yeah. It is. So, uh—thanks, Cas. For the coffee, and the little fairy tale reading.” Dean grinned, and it sent a little zap of warmth right to Cas's sternum.

“Of course, Dean,” Cas responded quietly, watching him turn and go.

 

***

 

Cas wasn’t pining. He didn’t pine. He didn’t have time to pine, it would be ridiculous to pine over someone he knew nothing about, there was absolutely no way he was pining.

It had been over a month since the beautiful, intriguing man had dashed into Subtext to avoid the storm. Cas knew he’d never see him again, but what did a little daydreaming hurt? It wasn’t like he met people regularly in this small town.

He rested his elbow on the counter, chin in hand, and sighed.

“Come on, Cas.” Charlie threw a standard, red and white six-sided die at his head, missing spectacularly. “Quit it with the pining and tell me the latest D&D Adventure book is going to be in soon.”

Cas picked up the die and rolled it between two fingers as he dragged his tablet across the countertop toward himself. He tapped away with his other hand, going through the invoices for the books he had incoming.

“Looks like it should be here Tuesday, Charlie,” he confirmed.

It was early on a Saturday, and there were no customers in the store—Charlie didn’t count as a customer, no matter how much money she spent. She came here half for roleplaying supplies and fantasy novels, and half for his company. Cas figured that earned him the right to flick the die back at her, pinging it off her forehead so that it bounced and scuttled across the floor.

“Ouch!” Charlie complained, rubbing her brow but grinning. “Was that my punishment for making fun of your lovesick mooning?”

“No,” grumbled Cas. “I do not moon any more than I pine.”

“So, you assault all the customers with board game pieces?” came a deep voice from behind Charlie.

Cas hadn’t heard that voice much, it was true, but nonetheless, it was immediately familiar.

“Dean!” he said in surprise as a much drier-looking Dean moved into the store, the bell above the door jangling as he closed it behind him. “What are you doing here?”

It turned out that his sandy blonde hair pushed up at the front when it wasn’t wet. It made him look even better, damnit.

Dean bent down, picking up the die, and threw it casually across to Charlie. Then he turned to look at Cas, something uncertain in his eyes. “Are you not open? Is it not okay to be here?”

Cas flushed immediately. “Yes! Of course. I’m open. I mean—the store is open. I just wasn’t expecting you to come back.”

“Oh,” said Dean, and for a moment Cas thought he looked a little deflated.

“You know,” Cas quickly added, feeling like he was slowly digging himself into a hole behind the counter, and soon only his tragically uncombed dark hair would be peeking above the register. “Because you said you weren’t from around here…”

“Oh!” Dean's eyes widened as he understood. “Yeah, I’m actually not, but—I couldn’t help wondering if that book was out yet. The one you read—” Dean cut himself off suddenly, as if he’d been about to say, _the one you read to me_ , but realized it might sound strange. His eyes flicked over to Charlie, who was watching them both intently.

She rolled the die across her knuckles like some kind of jester, turning her head slowly back and forth between Cas and Dean, squinting thoughtfully, before her eyes widened. “Oh, you’re the fairy tale guy.”

Cas shot her a glare, to which she only responded with a fox’s grin. “Did you need anything else this morning, Charlie?” he asked her, as professional-sounding as possible.

“Nah, I’m good. I’ll be back tonight for the poetry jam though, if you’re gonna read.” She leaned conspiratorially over the counter, resting her weight on her elbow as she stage-whispered, “They really _are_ fanfiction green.”

Cas ushered Charlie away from the front of his desk without another word, burning with embarrassment.

He returned to the register, where Dean still stood, looking thoughtful and somewhat wary. “Let me just check the shelf for you,” Cas said, sidestepping briefly into the comforting corner of adult fiction to calm himself down.

The world was cruel, he decided, to dangle such a beautiful, captivating man that he couldn’t have in front of him, not once, but twice. Scanning the shelf, he realized that Claire, his part-time helper, must have sold the copy he knew they’d had in stock.

Cas moved back to Dean, smiling apologetically. “It looks like someone already snapped up the copy I ordered for the store.”

“Oh, well, that’s okay,” Dean said, his face falling a little.

“You’re welcome to take mine,” Cas said suddenly, not sure where the words had come from. “I mean, the pages might be a little dog-eared, and I occasionally take notes in the margins, but it's readable—”

“Are you sure?”

Cas wasn’t sure, honestly, he had no idea why he was offering his own copy of a book he’d loved, when he could just have ordered Dean one—which would even have given him another excuse to come back to town, he realized belatedly. Or Dean could have picked one up from a more local bookseller, most likely. But here he was. “Of course, Dean.”

“I’m surprised you remember my name,” Dean said, filling the quiet while Cas pulled his backpack off the floor and started rooting around in it. “That’s pretty good customer service on your part.”

Cas wasn’t good at remembering names, most of the time, but he didn’t tell Dean that.

His backpack was always full of books and journals, and he was almost one hundred percent certain that the advance copy of _Old Tales Made New_ was in there somewhere. Dean watched him quietly as he pulled a bunch of books out, piling them on the counter to find the one he wanted.

“Looks like you read a lot,” Dean noted, the crooked grin that Cas remembered so clearly emerging.

“I do,” he admitted. “I think it’d be barbaric to own a bookstore and not be a reader.”

Dean nodded slowly. “This is kind of unusual though,” he said, reaching out to run a finger along one of the book edges. It was bent, and dog-eared, and there were post its and scraps of napkins and more than one lost bookmark peeking out from the pages.

“Ah,” Cas said, twisting his lips shyly. “Yes, quite a lot of my book-loving friends give me strife about that. I like to make notes. Books to me, they’re… real, vivid tales. They’re not meant to be perfect, they’re meant to be loved.”

Dean’s smile softened slightly. “I happen to agree.”

Cas held out the fairy tale book, having found it near the bottom. “Well, here. I guess the next stage of this one’s tale is to meet you.”

Dean took it almost reverentially. “This is awesome, dude. I appreciate you doing this.”

Cas shrugged, still not quite sure why he had. “It’s not a big deal. At least it’ll save you driving back here again, though at least the weather is better this time.”

Another crooked smile came at Cas, and he found that it knocked the breath from his lungs. Perhaps it was a good thing that Dean wasn’t local; that kind of reaction would get embarrassing if it was too frequent.

They stood silently for a moment, and Cas only belatedly realized that he was staring. Again.

Dean cleared his throat and broke the long silence. “So, uh—the redhead, before. She said you were doing some kind of reading, tonight?”

“Yes.” Cas nodded, slipping back into the safe familiarity of work-mode. “Subtext hosts social nights every Saturday where people come and enjoy poetry jams, dramatic readings, even stand up or acoustic music sometimes. Basically, I provide a microphone and let people do their thing.”

“And you read, sometimes?”

Can nodded. “Yeah, if something has inspired me that week.”

“And something has this week?” Dean asked, allowing his eyes to bridge the space between them again, holding.

“Yes,” Cas said slowly, oddly shy under the full weight of it. “I think something has.”

 

***

 

Cas didn’t notice Dean that night, not at first. He was serving coffees, chatting to his regulars, not thinking that he’d see the man again beyond the slightly awkward, lingering goodbye they’d shared hours before. But when he stood up to read, a familiar sandy head nodded in his direction from the back of the small crowd.

Oh.

Cas felt his mouth run suddenly dry, the act he’d planned to read from Shakespeare now seeming to hold more meaning than he’d intended. Midsummer Night’s Dream was simply his favorite of the playwright’s fae tales, and he’d had his mind so full of fairy tales in the past few weeks, it had come to him easily.

He looked away from Dean, down to the mangled compilation he held: _Fairy Tales from Shakespeare_ , by Fay Adams Britton, and gulped harshly.

Perhaps he could just… not look at Dean.

He cleared his throat, and Charlie wolf-whistled obnoxiously from the front. “Come on Cas, we all wanna hear that sexy voice of yours! Even the gayest of us!”

Those in the crowd who were familiar with her snorted, and Cas even saw a smile ghost across Dean’s features. So, he began.

 

 

> “ _How happy some o'er other some can be!_
> 
> _Through Athens I am thought as fair as she._
> 
> _But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so._
> 
> _He will not know what all but he do know._
> 
> _And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,_
> 
> _So I, admiring of his qualities._
> 
> _Things base and vile, holding no quantity,_
> 
> _Love can transpose to form and dignity._
> 
> _Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind._
> 
> _And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind._
> 
> _Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste—_
> 
> _Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste._
> 
> _And therefore is Love said to be a child,_
> 
> _Because in choice he is so oft beguiled._ ”

 

By the time he reached the end of the first page of the first act, Cas was aware of most of the crowd staring at him. He was used to it, by then, and even though he flushed lightly under the little spotlight that Charlie had insisted he install, he found it easy to get lost in the words and carry on.

He felt Dean’s eyes on him the whole time, though he wasn’t quite brave enough to return the look. What was the point, when he’d be gone again so soon?

By the time Cas was done, to rousing applause, Charlie was ready to get up and perform her World of Warcraft-themed comedy routine. Cas always enjoyed it, and as he was pulled here and there to mingle with his patrons, to ring up the odd book purchase and sell a few beverages, he lost track of the evening.

By the time the room began to clear, Cas looked around, and Dean was gone.

He couldn’t help the disappointed, longing thrum that ran through his chest at the realization, though he did mentally kick himself for it. Idiot.

 

***

 

Wednesday morning, a package arrived.

That in itself wasn’t unusual—owning a bookshop, Cas got packages almost every day. But this one was small, the shop address handwritten in minute, neat writing, and the address an unfamiliar county in Kansas, rather than anyone he knew here in Illinois.

It was labeled simply: Cas.

He brewed himself up a cup of coffee amidst the morning quietness of the stacks and settled down to open it.

Out of the padded envelope slipped his copy of _Old Tales Made New._  

Dean had sent him back the book. He certainly hadn’t intended for him to, he’d meant it more as a gift and certainly hadn’t expected to see it again. Flicking the cover open almost idly, something grabbed his attention.

Whenever Cas made notes in a book of any kind he always used a very fine blue ink pen, so that it was easy for him to spot his observations amongst the black printed text. But his book wasn’t just black and blue, any longer.

It was black, and blue, and red.

Dean had taken it upon himself to respond to Cas's notes, leave some of his own, and jot little thoughts here and there. But only for the first tale—the only one Cas had time to reread and annotate before he’d given the book away.

Tucked into the first page, was a note.

 

 

> _Dear Cas,_
> 
> _Looks like you weren’t finished, so I thought we could share._
> 
>  
> 
> __\- Dean Winchester_ _
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 

Cas could feel the smile creeping over his face, and he didn’t need a mirror to know that it was one of the wide, gummy ones that Charlie said made him look like even more of a dork than usual. Schooling it off his face, he tucked the book away safely for later.

He knew it didn’t _mean_ anything.

Sharing a book wasn’t exactly flirting.

But, given the dearth of other romantic entanglements in Cas's life, he could at least dream. And okay… maybe pine a little. Those were, still, the most gorgeous eyes he’d seen in his life. He was only so strong.

His workday flew by quickly. Evening rolled around and he curled up eagerly on the sofa in his tiny, jumbled, and mismatched apartment. Or at least, Charlie called it that; he liked to think of it as cozy, homely, and eclectic. With a big mug of tea at hand, he opened up the book Dean had given him. Or he had given Dean. Whichever it was, they appeared to be sharing it now.

Opening up the first page of text, Cas found himself quickly pulled into Deans insightful, interesting notes. He echoed Cas's thoughts on the way the literary devices used mirrored the original tales but were twisted so beautifully to reflect modern readers. The more he read, the more he was impressed with Dean’s comments. He was smart, at times witty, and not afraid to argue his own points against Cas's in the tiny margins. At several points he’d had so much to say that he’d slipped extra pieces of paper between the pages, just to have space to tell a tale or expand on something that Cas had noted with further literary examples. Before he knew it, Cas had spent an hour reading and rereading Deans thoughts, sipping away at his tea.

Setting his mug down on the coffee table, Cas pulled over the bubble mailer that the book had arrived in, smiling thoughtfully at the return address in the top corner.

Well, alright then. Why not?

Grabbing a pen, he wrote back. He responded to many things that Dean had said, using the backs of the pieces of paper Dean had slipped into the binding. He reacted to the tiny personal tales Dean had included as to why a certain character resonated, or a why a certain piece of dialogue was troublesome. Then Cas began reading the next tale, and annotating that one.

Thus, their strange, epistolary friendship began.

 

***

 

Cas learned a lot about Dean as the months went by, both in little comments here and there and through longer exchanges in the letters that now accompanied the extremely dog-eared copy of Old Tales Made New.

It was a strange way to maintain a friendship, if that’s what it was, Cas knew. It wasn’t the eighteen hundreds, he could just send Dean his number. They could text, or speak on the phone.

But somehow this felt special. It was special.

Cas learned that Dean was a mechanic for whom a love of literature was a hobby. Cas got the impression that Dean had always been told his brother was the book smart one, and he doubted his own intelligence by comparison—yet his quick mind shone through in everything he wrote. He particularly enjoyed mid-century American dystopian literature, and Cas had a feeling that the man could talk on the themes of some of those authors for a long time, given the chance.

He found he’d like to give him the chance.

It was ridiculous, Cas knew. They’d met twice—three times, if their eyes meeting over a crowd while Cas read counted at all—and only exchanged the briefest of conversations. But there was something about Dean that Cas couldn’t shake.

Dean hadn’t ever specified whether he had any interest in men. That was the first thing that held Cas back. But the second, increasingly, became that they were friends. Having to take the time to sit down and write, and _think_ about what you said to a person, made you put a lot more effort into your discussions with them, Cas discovered. Despite the slow mode of communication, he felt like they were getting to know each other well. Dean was dear to him, and had definitely become one of the people in the world of whom Cas was fondest.

In fact, when the last tale in the book arrived many weeks after they’d begun sending the volume back and forth, he opened the package with an oddly heartbroken feeling in his chest.

This was it, they’d done the whole thing. Once he’d read Dean’s answers to his last notes on this final story, they’d be done. Perhaps they could start another book?

For the first time, Cas didn’t want to respond straight away.

So for five long days, the book went unopened, dragged back and forth in Cas's bulging backpack.

Saturday morning, Cas wandered down the basement steps and into Subtext, flicking on the lights as he meandered amongst the stacks. This was his happy place, but even here, something was missing.

The bell above the door chimed. He didn’t immediately call out, not wanting to make anyone jump while he was hidden amongst the books, but began to make his way to the front of the store.

“Cas?” a deep voice called out.

Cas froze, mid-step. “Dean?”

“Cas!” Dean turned the corner, obviously searching for him. He looked as great as ever, even more so with the warm, happy grin he was wearing.

Cas briefly thought that his ribcage might not survive this encounter, full to almost bursting with all the things he was feeling.

“What are you doing here?” Cas asked, an oddly relieved smile making his cheeks hurt. It was probably that dorky smile that Charlie made fun of again, but he just couldn’t seem to smooth it away.

Dean shifted awkwardly. “I, uh, I came to see you. I was hoping that part would be obvious—you didn’t read the book, did you?”

“You came all the way up from Kansas to see me?”

“Well, only kind of—you didn’t read the book, for sure.” Dean grinned.

“I didn’t. Not yet,” Cas confessed. “I was putting it off.”

They were standing a couple of feet apart, Cas with an armload of misplaced books, and Dean fiddling idly with the edge of one of the bookshelves, running his finger back and forth across the wood as if he was somehow nervous.

“Why didn’t you open it?” Dean asked quietly.

“I, uh,”—Cas was pink, he just knew it, he was probably pink head to toe—“I didn’t want the book to be over.”

Dean gave a little laugh, looking down at the hardwood floor beneath his feet. “Well I was hoping that by now you’d have picked up on the subtext enough to know that I didn’t want it to be over yet, either.”

Cas found himself blinking slowly, a strange thrumming feeling building up behind his sternum. “You didn’t?”

“Nope.” Dean grinned, to the bookcase rather than the floor; it wasn’t looking at Cas, but it was progress upwards. “So, when I first came in here, hiding from the storm, I’d been to visit an old friend of my family, the day before. He lives here in town, owns Singer Salvage.”

“Bobby Singer,” Cas said, nodding. Sioux Falls wasn’t big enough for him to be completely unfamiliar.

“Yeah, Bobby. The second time I came, when you gave me the book initially, was because I had to sign some papers Bobby’s attorney drew up.”

Cas frowned, unsure where this conversation was going. “His attorney?”

“Yea, persnickety old bastard called Rufus. Anyway, he decided to retire a while back. And after thinking about it for a bit, he decided to pass the yard onto me.”

“The yard—Singer Salvage? Here? In Sioux Falls?”

Dean nodded slowly. “Yup. It took me a couple months to get everything together back in Kansas, make sure my little brother’d be okay at school, that kinda thing. It’s all in the book. Or the letter in the book.”

“So you—you’re moving here.”

Dean nodded again.

“Oh, well, congratulations,” Cas said, feeling oddly adrift. “That’s great news for you, that you get to take over the business.”

“I wasn’t meant to come up here for another two weeks, but you didn’t send the book back as quickly as usual, and I... okay, well I got a little worried that I’d offended you with my letter. So I kinda came to apologize. And just check that everything is okay.”

“Offend me? Why would you apologize—you know what?” Cas paused, holding up a finger. He turned, moving on through the small maze of bookshelves to the sales counter. He put his armload of books down and swung his backpack up onto the surface so he could unzip it. Digging around, he pulled out the most recent package, slipping the book out onto the counter. Turning to the last story, Cas tugged out the folded paper that waited there.

“Uh,” said Dean, behind him. “Maybe I should go, and you can answer that when you—”

“No—please.” Cas turned and reached to grab Dean’s sleeve, suddenly desperate not to have him leave this time. “Please wait a minute. If you can.”

He turned his eyes back down, skimming through Dean’s letter as quickly as he could. He talked about some work he was excited to do on his classic car, updated Cas on his brother, and told him about Bobby’s offer to take Singer Salvage off his hands. The last two paragraphs were the ones that made Cas wish he’d sat down first.

_“Cas, this was the last tale in Old Tales Made New. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you the last couple of months, exchanging letters with you and picking your brain about every topic these stories brought up. But there is one thing we’ve never covered; what happens when the book ends? I find myself honestly sad that we’re done. I will miss it, and even more than that, I will miss you._

_So, what if we do another book, together? And what if this time, we do it in person, passed from hand to hand across counters with coffee, across dinner tables—or not passed at all, just shared? You’ve never said, in any of our correspondence, whether you’d be interested in me as anything more than a friend. But now, I can’t stop myself from asking, any longer. So, would you? If I tell you that I’m falling for you, will you share more fairy tales with me?”_

Cas could sense Dean next to him, practically vibrating with nerves.

He carefully folded the letter, knowing that he’d want to keep it, and slipped it back inside the book—now loose in its bindings, filled with a ridiculous amount of paper, post-its and handwritten scribbles in all colors of the rainbow. Then he turned, marching off into the book stacks.

“Cas?” Dean asked taking a moment to follow him. “Do you want me to lea—”

Cas cut him off, finding the book he’d been making a beeline straight for and practically shoving it at Dean, pressing it into his chest: a large, hardback compendium of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

“I suggest we do this one next,” he said breathlessly. “It’ll take us a very long time to finish—there’s over two hundred fairy tales in there, depending on the edition.”

Dean’s worries finally cracked away with a smile, the cocky grin that Cas had missed, and Cas simply had to surge forward kiss it from his face.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Bookstore AU's are a secret love of mine. I hope you enjoyed this little one!
> 
> Please do leave a comment and let me know if you did! :)
> 
> You can find me [over here on tumblr.](https://malmuses.tumblr.com/) Feel free to come and say hi!
> 
> \- Mal <3


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